Conflagration
by RedFox
Summary: A huge reunion of all the characters goes up in flames - figuratively and literally.


Conflagration

By Darren "RedFox" McRoy

            It was a warm day in Knothole, and just the right weather for an annual reunion. Sonic and friends had attempted numerous times to bring together everyone for one big bash, but something either went wrong at the party, someone couldn't attend, or some killjoy cynic happened to bring up the fact that numerous guests were not, in fact, alive. That often spoiled things.

            It was the one time of the year that hero and villain could relax in lawn chairs side by side and discuss their personal lives while sipping martinis. It was almost like a "safety zone" from some children's game, where members of opposite teams were protected from the wrath of the other side. After midnight, however, everyone would go back about their business of killing each other. After all, that was what they did, and it kept the editors happy.

            Sonic was reacquainting with Shadow by the volleyball net, where Sally and Bunnie had challenged Antoine and Elias to a game. "Not fair!" Elias moaned when Bunnie extended her robotic arm to three times its usual length and drove a spike into the sand. She didn't even have to jump, and it was a good thing, because it was unlikely that such event was plausible. Metal tended to weigh one down some.

            Tails and Amy were splashing in the shallow end of the pool, while Knuckles executed a perfect back dive off of the board. Behind him, Rouge was sitting in a beach chair, wearing sunglasses, and reading a John Grishom novel. Rotor was flipping burgers and chatting with Fiona, who was maintaining the cooking hot dogs.

A special area was set off for robots; Sonic's parents were talking with a pair of Badniks, and a number of SWATbots were playing horseshoes. They didn't tend to have very good depth perception, and a number of the shoes ended up going some fifty feet beyond their designated target. For this reason, the pit was moved to the far end of the area.

            Dr. Eggman seemed to have the hardest time holding himself back from doing something rash. It was true that he was enjoying the party; the food was beyond belief. However, being surrounded by all of his adversaries and not being able to do anything to make their day miserable was very close to being beyond him. When Sonic actually walked within five feet of him and said "Hi," Eggman turned so red that Sonic was concerned that he might pop. It would have been a quite inconvenient mess.

            Geoffrey St. John, Hershey, Wombat-Stu, and Valdez, of the Secret Service, were sitting in the shade playing cards. Heavy and Bomb, the other two members, were off in the robot area. Nack the Weasel was enjoying a game of tetherball with his sister, Nic. The game probably would have gone better if both opponents hadn't tried to cheat at every opportunity. 

There was even a small nine-hole pitch-and-putt style golf course that was staked out. All members of the Chaotix, Charmy, Espio, Vector, Mighty, Ray, and Julie-Su, were playing a short round, and relatively evenly. After one particularly bad shot, Vector send his nine-iron soaring over the seventh green and into the only lake on the course, which also happened to be the only water hazard in Knothole. Espio started to make a comment about Vector not being able to stay out of hazards with his balls or clubs, but thankfully Mighty smacked him before he could finish.

The basketball court was occupied by the Fearsome Foursome, and their two-on-two game was something to watch. Sgt. Simian and Flying Frog were playing Predator Hawk and Lightning Lynx, while Mammoth Mogul watched and gave tips. Each player was using their specific talent to the best of their ability. It was useless trying to shoot on Simian, he merely swatted the ball away like a fly. Lightning Lynx was impossible to guard, one second he was in front of his defender, the next the ball was through the hoop. Flying Frog's game style was similar; his agility let him dash around an opponent with ease and he could easily jump high enough for a slam dunk. Predator Hawk played a game of the air, grabbing the ball, soaring over the basket and dropping it in. It was also by his means, however, that the game came to a halt when his talons gripped the previously inflated ball too tightly.

Snively found himself lost in the revelry. Meandering over to the drinks bar, he ordered two shots of hard alcohol. Smiling, Mina provided them from behind the desk. Snively drank them both in two gulps and went to go sit down. He figured that those most likely wouldn't be his last drinks of the day.

Naturally, there were far more people present than described above. Ixis Naugus, the evil wizard, was talking with his sworn enemy, overlander Nate Morgan. A wealth of various echidnas and dingoes occupied the picnic spot in the northwest. Basically, Knothole was swarming with people, and mostly everyone was having fun.

Had Ray taken Charmy's advice about club selection, the entire calamity might never have happened. Instead, he sliced a six-iron directly off of the course and towards the basketball court. Ray was too stunned to yell, but Julie-Su screamed out "Fore!" for him.

On the court, Sgt. Simian was about to take a shot when he heard the cry. Turning his head to look, the ball struck him square in the forehead. Reeling, Simian launched the ball randomly off behind him, directly towards the cooking area. The ball smashed directly into one of the grills, sending up a small explosion that sent Rotor and Fiona staggering backwards.

The explosion had started a fire in the disposable napkins. Heroically, Valdez grabbed a water container and emptied its contents on the blaze. Or at least he thought that it was a water container. In fact, Valdez had just emptied a bottle of lighter fluid on an already out-of-control inferno. The resulting fireball blinded everyone nearby momentarily and quite nearly killed Valdez himself.__

Now the tents had caught fire as well, and they were not made of any type of flame-resistant material. The orange blaze spread at triple the rate, stripping the entire top of the pergola completely bare.

Pandemonium ensued. The mayhem was beyond belief. Eggman, always a brave man of action, tried to hide under a stray canoe. Snively was already there. Eggman yanked his terrified nephew out and began to edge under the canoe. It was about then that he wished that he had started his diet on schedule. Eventually realizing that he simply would not fit, Eggman attempted to crawl out. He couldn't. He attempted to stand and found that his entire posterior was wedged between the gunnels. When he stood, the entire canoe came with him, up into the air. Faced with this horrendous debacle, the genius doctor put an incredible plan into action: he sat down and began to cry.

The four volleyball players began tossing sand from the artificial court onto the flames, which slowed it somewhat. Sonic and Shadow were off in a flash, searching for a large source of water. What they found was the swimming pool. Tails, being the mechanical genius that he was, found a way to operate a stray hose on principles of suction as to get it to shoot water a reasonable distance.

            Using the hose, Sonic, Shadow, Tails, and Amy began to fire at the flames when they encountered a new problem. About a quarter of the guests were robots, many of who's joints would be rusted solid upon contact with water. The Secret Service began to take care of that problem; Geoffrey, a born leader, managed to get orders to his team to get all robots far away from the flames. It would mean no robotic help combating the flames, but the hose was most likely worth it.

            Somehow, the Chaotix had managed not to notice any of this. Ray took a mulligan, much to Vector's disgust, and play continued. For the record, Mighty won the match by a stroke.

            Knuckles suddenly realized that Mina was still trapped in the concession stand. To punctuate the point, she screamed as a burning piece of wood from the roof fell a foot away from her. Launching a fist into the wall, Knuckles couldn't help thinking, _Kids, don't try this at home_. It may have behooved him to remember that, at fifteen, he was still essentially a 'kid'. His fist slammed directly into a stud in the wall, and the shock to his arm rattled him badly. His ire can be imagined when Bunnie walked up next to him and punched directly through another stud with her robotic arm. Within thirty seconds, Mina was free. _I coulda done that_, Knuckles thought.

            The water in the pool was running low, the supply of sand from the court had been exhausted, and the inferno still loomed. The bonfire had spread from the buildings, now, and the forest was lighting up with orange flames. Growing increasingly dissatisfied with the party, many guests had voted to depart – rather quickly, in fact. Only minor injuries were sustained as a panic-stricken mob began to swarm for the exits.

            "Hey – _ow_! What are you – _Jesus_! Offa my leg! You stupid little – what the – aaarg, that was my_ head_! _Somebody help me, I'm being trampled here!"_ Flying Frog was experiencing some difficulties in the throng.

            Promptly converting to masochism, Hershey lay down in the fire.

            Rouge took the golden opportunity to rid herself of the Grishom novel. It was boring her anyhow, and it was also beginning to become rather difficult to read with the heat.

            Eggman's wooden canoe, still firmly fixed on his butt, caught fire. "SNIVELY!" he cried. His lackey had rescued a number of wine bottles from the concession stand and was happily binging, having lost his sanity far earlier in the catastrophe. In fact, he believed that he was lounging on a beach far to the south, enjoying the heat and getting a tan. He also believed that his name was Leonardo.

            Julie-Su chipped up onto the eighth green. She noticed that there was quite a commotion coming from the main party area. _Guess they're having a wild time_, she thought. _Better finish this round before all of the food's gone_.

            Most of the food had, in fact, been incinerated.

            The Great Forest was now ablaze, and now everyone had thrown bravery to the winds and racing to escape. A huge burning branch suddenly crashed down and sealed off the only remaining exit, trapping everyone inside.

            "Fly!" Sally suddenly screamed. "Who can _fly_? Start lifting us out of here!"

            Everyone seemed to turn towards Tails, Predator Hawk, any robots who could fly, and Charmy, who had deemed it appropriate to return when the fairway caught fire. Wasting no time, Tails grabbed Sonic and began to carry him over. Charmy snatched Espio, Hawk grabbed Lightning Lynx, and the robots began to scramble for those who were normally considered villains.

            "Eggman!" Nack cried to the doctor, who had managed to free himself of the burning canoe. "You're always boasting about your great robots! If they're so amazing, can't they get through this darned fire on their own?"

            He had shouted this so loudly that a number of the mechanical creatures heard him, and apparently decided that they were capable of making it through. They raced into the fire and emerged on the other side unharmed. Then they simply kept running, having received no instruction to help the trapped folk in any way. However, since about a third of the party guests had been robots, the job of those who could fly had just been made significantly easier.

            They worked fast, and rested intermittently. Those land bound creatures who weren't being rescued were digging a trench around the perimeter of the clearing to keep the fire from spreading too much. Heavier Mobians were carried by two or three fliers at a time. And, within the space of an hour, everyone was clear of the forest.

            Everyone stood at the forest edge and watched it go up in flames.

Then someone realized that the truce was officially over.

Author's Note

This story was created using characters from SEGA and Archie Comic Publications. My e-mail is redfox742@yahoo.com. E-mail me if you particularly enjoyed this story, or have any suggestions for my writing.

This story was going to be something else, but I didn't like that idea, so I cut it short and left out the original plan. I hope that it wasn't too noticeable.

There's little more for me to say. Thanks for reading!

-Darren McRoy, "RedFox, February 2003


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